pretences. Scientific men, in fact, do not object on scientific grounds, but because of a priori reluctance to accept miracles or anything that is supernatural. But this is a purely theoretic objection, not based on inductive or deductive philosophy, any more than upon inductive science.

I shall not attempt to defend the older theories of miracles or of supernatural divine actions. The explanation of miracles, theories about them, are one thing; the reality of miracles in Biblical history is another thing. We are only concerned to maintain the reality of supernatural action. The reality depends upon historic testimony, not upon theories of any kind, as to whether it may be possible or not.

No one can reasonably maintain that God may not manifest Himself at pleasure, interpose for a noble purpose, work a miracle, or enable a man to work a miracle, in the interest of truth and righteousness. Even Hume could not deny that. He attacked miracles as insufficient in evidential value. It is then simply a question of evidence. Hume and his followers are unreasonable in demanding more evidence than is sufficient.

A modern man will not appeal to the supernatural if he can help it; and if any reasonable explanation of a miracle can be given which brings it under the known laws of nature, he will accept it. He has sufficient reason for thinking that the new discoveries of principles and laws that are being made will explain many miracles that are now difficult to explain. As I said some years ago, if all miracles could

be explained by some at present unknown laws, they would not cease to be miracles.1

What Philosophy demands, is a sufficient reason for any extraordinary action, whether by God or man. We can assign a sufficient reason for the extraordinary action of God in entering the world by incarnation in a virgin's womb. He came in the fulness of time, as St. Paul says, born of a woman, in order to redeem mankind. He became a Godman by incarnation, to become the Saviour of the world. That reason is sufficient, as it is the most important of all reasons, for such a unique conception and birth of a virgin.

We make a mistake by thinking too much of the passive side rather than of the active side of the Incarnation. It is quite true that the Creed says: born of the Virgin Mary, and later, conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. But that meant in the Creed, what it meant in the New Testament writers and the early Christian writers, something more than the exact words conveyed. It meant at least all that Matthew and Luke give in their narratives, and to most writers all that St. Paul and St. John teach in addition. Thus, in Luke, the central tetrastich gives:

"The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee,

And the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee."

This implies the theophanic presence of God, present as at the dedication of the tabernacle and the

temple, and at the baptism and transfiguration of our Lord: in other words, a divine activity; not merely by a power or influence sent down from heaven, but by reality of presence to the Virgin.

In the teaching of St. Paul and St. John, as to the advent of the Son of God, He Himself is active; He comes from heaven; He personally and voluntarily becomes flesh. St. Luke does not make Christ active here, but passive, as the product, the holy seed; but this by no means implies that he did not actually regard the Son of God as just as truly active in the production of the holy seed as was the divine Spirit. St. Luke could not have been a pupil of St. Paul, whose chief writings were behind him, when he wrote of the Virgin Birth, without holding as much as this. He reproduces his poetic source without changing the passive into the active, which as a disciple of St. Paul he would have been inclined to do. And so the early Christian writers all think of the Son of God as active in the production of His flesh in the Virgin's womb.

Thus Justin says: "It is wrong, therefore, to understand the Spirit and the power of God as anything else than the Word, who is also the first-born of God . . . and it was this which, when it came upon the Virgin, and overshadowed her, caused her to conceive, not by intercourse but by power" (Apol. 33).

Hippolytus says, in his Commentary on Luke 27:

"The Word was the first-born of God, who came down from heaven to the blessed Mary, and was made a firstborn man in her womb; in order that the first-born of God might be manifested in union with a first-born man."

Irenæus says: "He took up man into Himself, the invisible becoming visible, the incomprehensible being made

comprehensible, the impassible becoming capable of suffering, and the Word being made man,' etc. (Adv. Hær., III, 16o). In arguing for the reality of the incarnation, he says: "Why did He come down into her, if He were to take nothing of her?" (III, 222).

Tertullian, in his third form of the Rule of Faith, paraphrasing the very article of the Virgin Birth, says:

"This Word is called His Son, under the name of God, was seen in divers manners by the patriarchs, heard at all times in the prophets, at last brought down by the Spirit and Power of God into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and being born of her, went forth as Jesus Christ" (Pra. Hær., 13).

We should think, therefore, first of the virgin conception, which was not of the seed of man, but of the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, entering her womb and becoming flesh therein. We are to start with the conception of manifestation in the flesh, epiphany in the flesh, as the culmination of all the theophanies of the Old Testament. He who in ancient Israel manifested Himself in the pillar of cloud and fire, and in the Shekina of the tabernacle and the temple, manifested Himself in flesh in Jesus Christ. This flesh, however, was not a mere appearance, or external dwelling-place of the Christ, as the Gnostics would have it. It was taken up into the Son of God Himself, and made an inseparable and eternal part of Himself. The flesh was derived from Mary the Virgin; and a human father had no part in it.

Irenæus says: "The Lord took dust from the earth and formed man; so did He who is the Word, recapitulating Adam in Himself, rightly receive a birth, enabling Him to gather up Adam from Mary, who was yet a virgin. . . . If the former was taken from the dust, and God was his

maker, it was incumbent that the latter also, making a recapitulation in Himself, should be formed as man by God, to have an analogy with the former as respects His origin. Why, then, did not God again take dust, but wrought so that the formation should be of Mary? It was that there might not be another formation called into being, nor any other which should be saved; but that the very same formation should be summed up, the analogy having been preserved" (Adv. Hær., III, 2110).

We have studied the Virgin Birth and the conception by the divine Spirit from the point of view of the New Testament and the Christian writers of the second and third centuries in their life-and-death struggle with Jews, Ebionites, and Gnostics. The more profoundly significant relations of this doctrine must be postponed till we come to study the Nicene Creed, in its earlier and later forms, in its combat with Arianism, Nestorianism, and Monophysitism.

We have taken much space in explaining the origin and historical significance of the Virgin Birth, and the defence of it from all objection; but we must not forget that it was the first act of the Son of God for our salvation. The incarnation itself, and indeed by Virgin Birth, was the initial saving act of the Son of God. It was not simply His entrance into the world, in order to become, later on, a Saviour by His death on the cross and His resurrection. This opinion is not an ancient one, nor a Biblical one, but a modern one, which makes the crucifixion the one great act of salvation. It is the familiarity of this generation with that doctrine, so wrapped up with modern views of the atonement, that makes it difficult for some to realize the necessity of a Virgin